


Everything There Is To Want

by openhearts



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-31
Updated: 2009-07-31
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Originally posted at LiveJournal)</p><p>If everybody could have upheld the unconscious assumption that Booth was immortal, and that Brennan would have all the time in the world to figure out why strangers always seemed to think they were married, then nobody would have felt so uncomfortable when the baby idea came up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything There Is To Want

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my Brennan-savvy beta [](http://cardiogod.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://cardiogod.livejournal.com/)**cardiogod**. Spoilers through the end of season 4.

They could have slid into this without anyone being the wiser if only he didn’t keep almost dying. 

 

If everybody could have upheld the unconscious assumption that Booth was immortal, and that Brennan would have all the time in the world to figure out why strangers always seemed to think they were married, then nobody would have felt so uncomfortable when the baby idea came up.

 

In the last four years, Booth had been kidnapped twice, shot (once by her – but it was just a flesh wound, and besides, he dropped her on her head), blown up three times, drugged, tortured, buried alive . . . too many reminders to ignore that she was essentially asking a crash test dummy to father her child.

 

If none of those things had happened, or the worst of them (this. Now. Tumor.) at least hadn’t, then they could have ignored the strangeness of it all and bought onesies with Albert Einstein’s face on them and it all would have been fine.

 

It was her return to the idea, once he was recovered and just barely back at work, that sent everybody over the edge.

 

Angela went first, of course. Cam tried with Booth again. They both rehashed their previous concerns, with a few tossed-in updates (recovery time? Emotional stability? Seriously?) which neither Booth nor Brennan had listened to the first time anyway. 

 

Nobody knew Hodgins stepped in, briefly, to say his piece as well.

 

“Dr. Brennan-”

 

“What is it Dr. Hodgins?”

 

“Look, I know this is a personal decision between you and Booth, but . . . I was buried in a car with you for over twelve hours, okay, and that’s gotta mean I can say something here.”

 

“I don’t . . . “

 

“You’re an incredible woman. You’re an incredible scientist. And I think that if you have a baby with Booth now you’re going to be miserable for the rest of your lives.”

 

“Why – what do you mean?”

 

He shrugged obliquely. “It’s just my opinion.”

 

“Hodgins! You can’t just say that and not explain yourself. I would be a very good mother, and Booth agrees.”

 

He shook his head and sighed. “Just . . . ask Booth, before you do this, what his ideal is. You didn’t get the ideal family. Nobody does. But you shouldn’t assume that you can’t at least try.”

 

He regarded her for a long moment. Blue eyes stared at each other across the warm shadowy expanse of her office.

 

“Okay,” she said finally, softly.

 

He left. 

 

Her hands stayed frozen, poised over her keyboard until her phone rang. ‘Booth,’ chanted the letters on the PDA screen. She picked up and held his voice crackling to her ear.

 

He said something, something about the case that she didn’t catch or catalogue properly because somehow she couldn’t get Hodgins’ words out of her head.

 

“Booth, what is your ideal?”

 

“My idea? What idea? Bones, are you gonna be ready for me to pick you up in-”

 

“No, Booth, your ideal. Your perfect, or best, or ultimate.”

 

“Perfect, best, ultimate what?”

 

“I don’t know. Hodgins told me I should ask you.”

 

“Bones. What are you talking about?”

 

“I don’t know! Hodgins came in my office and he said that since we were buried in a car together that he felt he should say that he thinks you and I will be miserable for the rest of our lives if you father a child with me. He said I should ask you what your ideal is. And he mentioned my family and said I shouldn’t assume I couldn’t try. Or we couldn’t try. I’m not sure which he meant.”

 

The pause was interminable until Booth sighed, deep and long.  A headache pounded behind his eyes, suddenly and mercilessly.

 

He pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park. He pressed fingers to the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut as tight as they would go.  

 

 

“Booth?”

 

“I’m here, Bones, just give me a minute.”

 

“Do you know what he means?” came the fuzzed-out voice over the line, like a slender finger tapping his shoulder. She just couldn’t wait sometimes. Her focus was now alerted and turned on him, on this, on everything he’d been blowing reassuring breezes over for years.

 

He turned the radio off and leaned back in his seat, head against the head rest and eyes closed. 

 

Fuck. Fuck Hodgins. Fuck. 

 

“Bones, we’ll . . . we’ll talk about this later. I’ll be there in five minutes, and we can go do this interview and-”

 

“Why can’t we talk about it now?”

 

“Bones, just leave it alone right now, okay? I just don’t think this is the time-”

 

“No, Booth, now. I don’t know what Hodgins meant, but he seemed very adamant, and now you’re being very hesitant and I want to understand what’s going on. Tell me.”

 

He shook his head back and forth across the headrest, and tossed a glance out the window. It was gray and raining, but the grass was a shocking deep green.

 

His voice was hoarse and shaking when he spoke. His words were methodical, weighted. A flow of adrenaline made the headache surge heavier and louder through his eyes and ears.

 

“My ideal is dating you, marrying you, and having children with you. I don’t want to be a donor, I don’t want to be unobligated, and I don’t want to be legally protected. I want to be your boyfriend, and your husband, and the father of your children. I want to live with you and be buried next to you. I want everything there is to have with you, and I want you to want it all too.”

 

He found himself pounding the steering wheel with a fist as he spoke, voice pitched louder than the message should have allowed. He was spilling out things he’d sworn he would never tell her like this, over the phone on a meaningless Thursday. But his hand had been forced and the anger – at Hodgins, at her, for taking away the choice to say it all sometime safer and better – spilled out as well.

 

“Oh.” 

 

It was more of a reflex of her lungs clearing room around her heart than a purposeful answer.

 

Then there was only breathing passing back and forth over the line; hers faint, his hard and rushed.

 

“You said . . . you said there was a line.” Her voice was quiet, just starting to rev up into full-on hypothesis mode.

 

He closed his eyes again, now gripping the steering wheel with a tightly wound fist.

 

“I know. I know Bones.”

 

“Is there? A line?” As if she needed to clarify.

 

He asked himself the question. He shrugged and a smile touched his face.

 

He put the car in drive and merged into traffic again.

 

“Booth? Are you still there?”

 

“I’ll be in your office in five minutes, Bones.”

 

She started to protest, but he hung up. He couldn’t find a way to say anything she needed to know over the phone.

 

_

 

 

She looks up at a sound, releasing her one-handed death grip on the edge of her desk. 

 

It’s Booth, standing there with his phone dangling from one hand at his side. His face is ashen but there’s a smile still fading from his mouth. He’s out of breath.

 

She watches him; eyes and mind working over it all. 

 

She stands from her chair and her phone clatters to the desk. She walks slowly, so slowly. More slowly than either of them can believe. But then it seems like before she even really starts to move that she’s there, crossing the room and into the space between his arms.

 

There’s a few seconds where nothing exists, and then when the room beings to slip back around them a smile breaks over his face, full and open.

 

His hands rub over her back, his grip tight and heavy. 

 

Real. 

 

Unmistakable.

 

_

 

 

They never really tell Hodgins, but he will see the embrace on his way out of the lab.

 

Angela will never forgive him for being the first one to know.

 

_


End file.
